The customer that tech forgot

Users must come first when creating and marketing products

There is an increasing trend towards spec-blindness in the consumer space.

The average man on the street doesn’t want to know that their phone has a dual core processor, 1GB RAM and a WVGA Super AMOLED Plus screen... and they don’t need to know.

All they care about is that it works for whatever they need it for, be it for calls, emails and the odd game of Angry Birds on the train home.

While us more technically-minded people may obsess over the technicalities, it’d be silly to expect the same from everyone else.

Part of the excitement around technology in recent years has been its wide availability and usability. We are told that anyone should be able use our technology systems, and as CIOs, we are under pressure to deliver ever easier-to-use programs and simpler interfaces for the end user.

But the noisy marketing around this positive message of usability can sometimes hinder the objective.

The problem is that the man on the street is also the man in the office. It’s too easy for all the wonderful technology that we have available to us to get lost amid the noise and garbled messaging, putting it beyond the reach of normal people who have to interact with and use it every day.

We have been hearing for years how CIOs and senior IT professionals need to bury the hatchet with line of business managers and, instead of focusing on the latest bleeding-edge technology for its own sake, seek to better understand the overall strategic objectives of their organisations.